A Turn in the Dark Wood by Edward Carl Stephens

A Turn in the Dark Wood

by Edward Carl Stephens

Macdonald & Co., 1969, [First Edition], hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, previous owners’ inscription and old prices on front endpaper, dustjacket shows some edge and shelf wear with some rubbing, bumping, chipping, creasing and small tears (see photographs)

“Al Loam is anxious – with a capital ‘A’ for Angst: anxious about his sex life, his family life, his business life, his whole life.  He has reached a point of such nearly total frustration that his suppressed desires erupt in a Walter Mitty torrent of erotic day-dreams.
Loam, the tragi-comic hero of this novel, is employed by Missionary Mills of New York, in charge of their Krispie Krunchie breakfast cereal account, where his entire day is spent re-arranging the contents of his in and out trays, drinking greasy coffee, eating hugely and secretly, and complaining about the pressures and exigencies of executive life in the Big City.  When he returns home at night, full of the important business he has enacted in his fantasies during the day and full of thoughts of the voluptuous secretarial force in the office and of the women he has passed on the street, he has one thing on his mind.  His wife has one thing on her mind: to get dinner on the table and the dishes washed.  Overwhelmed by frustrated potency, Loam wreaks his revenge by attacking and demolishing the food in front of hm, to spend the evening illuminated by the ghostly glow of the television screen, bereft of gastric calm, and threatened but never compromised by the papers in the attaché case waiting at his feet like a faithful dog.”